The House

Foreign Aid

By a 209-194 vote, the House removed the $651-million foreign-aid section from a supplemental appropriations bill for the current fiscal year. The fiscal 1987 spending measure (HR 1827), which later was sent to the Senate, allocates nearly $7 billion of its $9-billion price tag to farm subsidies provided through the Commodity Credit Corp. It also funds pay increases and pension benefits for federal workers and scores of other programs including ones for defense and the homeless.

The bill also contained strict arms-control language (see next vote).

Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.), a supporter of eliminating the foreign aid, said, “We can’t just throw the money out and forget how that money gets used against us.”

Opponent David R. Obey (D-Wis.) called the aid cut “irresponsible, gutless and stupid.”

Members voting yes wanted to delete the foreign aid.

How They Voted Yea Nay No vote Rep. Beilenson (D) x Rep. Berman (D) x Rep. Dixon (D) x Rep. Levine (D) x Rep. Waxman (D) x

Strike Vote

By a 151-261 vote, the House rejected a motion to strike the enactment clause of the $9-billion supplemental appropriations bill (above). This was a parliamentary attempt to kill the legislation.

House Republicans, the minority, generally voted yes to protest spending priorities and policies written into the bill by the Democratic majority.

A major GOP leadership objection was to the bill’s ban on virtually all nuclear tests if the Soviets reciprocate and its requirement that the Administration obey SALT II, the 1979 strategic arms limitation treaty never ratified by the Senate.

Most members voting yes wanted to kill the bill.

How They Voted Yea Nay No vote Rep. Beilenson (D) x Rep. Berman (D) x Rep. Dixon (D) x Rep. Levine (D) x Rep. Waxman (D) x

Drug Testing

The House rejected, 145 to 242, an amendment on behalf of a presidential order that certain federal workers undergo mandatory drug testing. The amendment to the supplemental appropriations bill (above) sought to restore funding for President Reagan’s executive order last fall that civil servants be tested if they hold positions where drug abuse could harm public health and safety or national security.

Supporters said the federal government must take the lead in combatting America’s drug epidemic, while opponents argued that the Administration program infringes too far into federal workers’ constitutional rights.

Members voting yes supported Reagan’s executive order last fall on drug testing.

How They Voted Yea Nay No vote Rep. Beilenson (D) x Rep. Berman (D) x Rep. Dixon (D) x Rep. Levine (D) x Rep. Waxman (D) x